Browse Best Of

Browse Weed

Car shops for the local gearhead

Top gear

With so much car culture here in Michigan, it'd be a fool's errand to try and cover all of the talented car shops and social clubs in the region. That said, here's a list of recommended spots for the discerning diehard.

Brothers Custom Automotive

Run by Bill Jagenow (his titular brother is no longer in the business), this shop has built a reputation for specializing in restoration work and custom builds for traditional-style cars. They're well-known for high-quality, tasteful hot rods, and believe strongly in getting cars to the point where people can actually, you know, drive them.
317 Park Dr., Troy; 248-760-0700

Masterworks Automotive

Services

Incorporated since 1979, this shop has been at its current location for the past 10 years. It's that kind of longevity that has brought clients in not just from Michigan but beyond. Owner Brian Meier says it's a shop with a fun atmosphere for people who eat, sleep, and breathe cars.

Like their name suggests, this shop deals with anything high-performance — Porsches, Audis, BMWs, and the like. A specialty of the shop is ECU calibration and in-house dynamometer tuning to achieve superior performance.

These guys fuse the look of vintage gangster automobiles with modern technologies and amenities.Their website claims, "When you roll up in a Mobsteel-edition ride, heads turn, and people are not sure if you are going to step out in a suit or with a sawed-off shotgun."

Not a repair shop per se, Woodward Warehouse is a classic car storage facility, founded by a retired attorney who simply needed a place to store his car collection. From there grew an idea to create a social club where classic car nuts could hang out longer than they could at your typical garage. Owners can tinker with their rides and afterward hang out in the facility's kitchen, lounge, or pool table room. There's a fee to store your car and another fee to join the social club.

An imports-only shop, Munk's primarily deals with German brands, and service both classic and contemporary. They're a mechanical shop, which means they don't do body work or paint jobs, but they specialize in performance parts and ECU tuning.